1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a browser apparatus connected to a server for providing information.
2. Description of Related Art
A browser apparatus such as a personal computer equipped with a software for browsing homepages offered by multiple servers on a network, e.g. the Internet, is provided having a so-called footmark function for saving the URL (uniform resource locator) address of each homepage of the server on the Internet.
When the address of a desired homepage to be accessed frequently has been registered by a user to his or her browser apparatus, the homepage can readily be viewed without manually entering the address e.g. through a keyboard. The name and address of the homepage once registered in advance can be selected and called for by the user easily operating e.g. a mouse.
Also, a list of classifications including various categories of sports, news, entertainments, and others is determined by a user for case of the browsing of homepages and used for assigning a desired classification to the address of each homepage for registration.
A procedure of registering the address of a homepage to one of the classifications is now explained referring to FIGS. 1 to 4.
As shown in FIG. 1, the procedure starts with Step S20 where a user accesses through a browser apparatus 12 to a desired homepage of a server. Then, the homepage of the server appears in a homepage display area 31 of a window 30 displayed on a display unit of the browser apparatus as shown in FIG. 2. Simultaneously, the address of the homepage is displayed in an address display area 32.
This is followed by Step S21 where a homepage menu 34 on a menu bar 33 is selected by the user operating an input device which is a pointing device such as a mouse or a touchpanel pen. Then, a pulldown menu 35 appears at Step S22.
When an extra menu 36 in the pulldown menu 35 is selected at Step S23, a dialogue box 37 shown in FIG. 3 is displayed over the window 30 at Step S24.
When a classification button 38 in the dialogue box 37 is enabled by the user at Step S25, a list of classifications 39 shown in FIG. 4 appears at Step S26. The list of classifications 39 includes a number of the classifications 40 predetermined and registered as well as names or addresses of the homepages which have been unclassified and unregistered.
When a desired one of the classifications 40 in the list of classifications 39 is selected and an OK button 41 is clicked by at Step S27, the address of the homepage being accessed and displayed in the address display area 32, shown in FIG. 2, is registered to the classification at Step S28.
As understood, the above procedure of classifying and registering an address corresponding to each data supplied from a server requires a redundancy of steps.
The list of classifications 39 shown in FIG. 4 is displayed in the form of a tree of classification levels and may extend downwardly in the window 30 as the items of classification are increased thus overlapping the other areas of the window 30 and impairing the appearance.